Bang–ups and Hang-Ups
I’m sorry to say so
But, sadly it’s true
That bang-ups and hang-ups
Will happen to you.
—Dr. Seuss
I’m not a bird-watcher as such, but I
like to watch birds at song and play and some years
ago I built a sanctuary in our backyard to attract them. I put in bird feeders,
birdbaths and places to nest and for several months I enjoyed the sight of our feathered
friends feeding and flitting about…
Ah, such is life: Our safe places are seldom
safe. Just about the time we think we’re past the hard stuff of life and settle
down to take our ease, something or someone comes along to disrupt our cozy
nest. Fractious families, financial losses, health problems, the frets of old
age and a host of other predations assail us. And as an older, wiser saint once
warned me, “Sometimes the harder tests are farther along.”
Having lived for a while, I must agree.
Life is hard and sometimes gets harder. Any other outlook is ingenuous. Why,
we ask, must so much of life be a vale of tears?
I think I’ve
heard most of the answers to that old question, but lately I’m satisfied with just
one: “All the discipline of the world is to make men children that God may be
revealed to them” (George MacDonald, Life
Essential). Sadness comes that we may become little children, resting in
the love of our Father in heaven, seeking to know and to do his will and to be like
him.
And we have this assurance: In a little
while sorrow and sadness will come to an end; the path of sorrow will
have led us to a land where sorrow is unknown. There, God “will wipe every tear
from (our) eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain...”
(Revelation 2:4).
English poet George Herbert put
it all together in a poem describing a dream in which he saw a globe of the
earth, “On whose meridian was engraven, ‘These
seas are tears, and heaven the haven.’”[1]
Can we not rejoice in sorrow
with such an end in view?
David Roper
[1] “The
Size” (1633)
